In 1987, backed with funding from CIBA Geigy
Pharmaceutical, the LDSDeseret Foundation, and the Utah Medical Association, Dr. Henry P.
Plenk chaired a committee whose task it was to gather material for and publish the history
of medicine in Utah. Medicine in the Beehive State: 1940-1990 is the result of that
effort. In his introduction, Plenk explains the difficulty of obtaining and editing the
many manuscripts that made up this volume: "In general, the oldest available member
of a department or in practice was sought out. If he was unable or unwilling to write,
others were approached. A balance between faculty members and practicing physicians was
attempted." Despite its seemingly limited appeal-mainly for physicians trained at the
University of Utah and/or practicing in Utah and its arbitrary division into six
unappealingly titled sections (Early History of the FourYear Medical School at the
University of Utah, Practice of Medicine and Medical Subspecialties, Surgery and Surgical
Specialties, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics, and Independent Departments)-Medicine
is an important work. For those who are interested in, or consider themselves part of, the
experience of the American West, this volume chronicles another type of pioneer, another
frontier, and another farfetched success story.

Which is not to say this is a well-written
history. For the most part, the book reads like a combination of Who's Who in America and
the encyclopedia, as its contributing authors plow dutifully through the list of their
colleagues' names, famous alma maters, and accomplishments. Probably the authors were all
given the same tedious mandate: Write a complete history of your field; mention as many
people as possible; make sure we know they came from someplace important; and tell what
wonderful physicians they were / are. It is ironic that individuals expert in that most
vitally human art-medicine-seem to have been forced by the structure and approach of this
volume to squeeze all humanity out of their writing and to stump heavily through a thicket
of detail better left to footnotes.

Not all Medicine, however, makes dull
reading. Plenk's "Early History of the Four-Year Medical School at the University of
Utah, 1942-1952" is, despite its title and its author's utilitarian use of language,
a remarkable account of the evolution of the medical school from a two-year to a four-year
institution, due in part to a need for more doctors during World War Il.

In addition to Plenk's account and
interspersed amid the catalogue of names and dates, the book offers some interesting
anecdotes about early medical practice in the state and insights into the pioneering role
Utah physicians played in curing diseases of the blood, refining cardiological procedures,
contributing to polio research, and so on. Dr. Lorimer T. Christensen's chapter,
"Allergy," for example, explores in lay terms the tremendous advances in his
field, in which as recently as the turn of the century "asthma sufferers smoked
stramonium leaves in a water pipe" as a form of therapy.

It is Dr. J. Eldon Dorman's
"Recollections of a Coal Camp Doctor," however, that makes us realize what has
been lacking in other chapters. From his arrival riding "in the back of a flatbed
coal truck, clutching [his] medical bag" to his closing tribute to the Greek,
Austrian, Italian, Welsh, and Japanese patients who had been part of his practice in
Carbon County, Dorman describes a world in which primitive conditions called for
inventiveness and character. He focuses on people the miners who often literally worked
themselves into their graves: Osby Martin who had "killed a man and served time in
the Colorado penitentiary;" Father Ruel who deputized Dorman to baptize a baby in his
absence; and Dr. McDermid who won the respect of the miners of Castle Gate. Recalling
McDermid's stand against a manager who had threatened to turn off the electricity in the
miners' company houses, Dorman notes:

I did not have the physique or the ability to
be as aggressive as Dr. McDermid, but this story illustrates how many of the early doctors
were willing to jeopardize their jobs with the companies that hired them in defense of the
coal miners and their families.

Despite its limitations, Medicine in the
Beehive State does assemble a wealth of information for those who want a quick
reference book noting the "big" names in Utah's medical history and listing
technical accomplishments in various medical fields. Furthermore, readers may begin to
see, as names and details merge and one medical breakthrough follows another, that
impressive things can happen in unlikely places and that the medical pioneers who came to
Utah from the great universities of the East laid the foundation for the highly respected
medical establishment we know today. When it comes to the state of medicine in the State
of Utah, in the words of the old Utah pioneer song-all is well.